Sonnet Offers Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for PCIe Cards

IRVINE, CALIF.: Sonnet announced the Echo Express SE, the newest member of the company’s Echo family of Thunderbolt expansion chassis for PCIe cards. The new device enables the use of a variety of high-performance PCIe adapter cards, originally designed for use in desktop computers, with any computer equipped with a Thunderbolt port. 

The chassis weighs 2.4 pounds measures 5.7-by-8.8-by-2.9 inches. It supports a single half-length (up to 6.5 inches long), full-height, single-width PCIe 2.0 x8 card and ships with an external 60W power supply. Like the other Echo Express expansion chassis, the SE has dual Thunderbolt ports to support daisy-chaining of devices and features a temperature-controlled fan to help keep hot-running cards cool. When not needed, the fan slows down. The SE also conserves energy by powering on and off with the computer to which it’s attached.

The Echo Express SE enables iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro computers equipped with a Thunderbolt port to use Thunderbolt-compatible professional video capture, audio interface, SAS and SATA HBA, 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10Gb Ethernet, and RAID controller cards. It’s now available for USD $399.95.